A comment on Reddit reminded me of a question that I have received many times. The question is always a good one because it stems from knowledge and deductive reasoning. The said question requires one ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW7CGTK-1vA ...

Osedax worms, or the ‘bone eating’ worms are little soft sacks resembling snotty little flowers. The “bone devourer” is not quite accurate as the worms do not actually feed on the bone mineral, but ...

Solar eclipse. From Wikimedia commons. On July 20th, 1963, three scientists sat on a research ship 200 miles south of Woods Hole, MA, waiting for something remarkable. They were nearly 4000m above the ...

Here’s a mystery: below 8,400 meters there are no fish. There are other creatures: sea cucumbers, anemones, tiny worms, but no one has ever seen a fish. At 8,370 meters? There are fish. But not below ...

I was just listening to a podcast about how sea sponges use the pores all over their body to “bring in food and release wastes” and I’m pretty sure that’s a scientific way of saying the holes in ...

Like most deep-sea biologists, I have a large collection of decorated Styrofoam cups. A couple dozen line the bookshelf of my office, each displaying a rainbow of Sharpie colors. Each cup is ...

Delving into the evolutionary past of the enigmatic deep-sea vampire squid, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, has long been a pursuit shrouded in mystery. However, recent discoveries, such as a remarkable ...

Evolution is repetitive, especially if it produces adaptations that work well. If it’s all about survival, spines do the trick throughout the mollusk world. Scorpion Spider Conch (Lambis scorpio) ...

In the profound darkness of the ocean’s depths, organisms face a choice concerning their visual capabilities. Some species evolve specialized eyes that grow to astonishing sizes, as seen in creatures ...

Magnapinna squids are one of the deep-sea more ethereal creatures. Little is known of these squid as very few have ever been captured, although over the last decade with the increased usage of ...

I have only seen a hydrothermal vent once, during Dive 73 aboard the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Doc Ricketts. Unlike many deep-sea biologists, I have always been more interested in ...